Tbh in most games crossbows tend to be overall worse due to lower attack speed or some shit like that. I think they are only superior in turn-based games where they're meant to be a straightforward damage upgrade, but not in something like Diablo 2 or Baldur's Gate.

>>5203971They're even shit in most turn based games (FF4 and tactics games come to mind) honestly. There's this glorification in video games of Legolas-types, and for some reason the utility of crossbows is never properly represented.

>>5204014I strongly suggest Age of Wonders, mate.Bows shoots up to 3 times per turn. Have so-so damage and subpar attack, even if maxed-out veteran unit is using it. Most of mid and all high-tier enemies laugh at it due to having defences high enough to completely ignore arrows.Crossbow shoots once per turn, regardless of anything. Has better damage and more importantly, twice as high attack, being on tier with ballista, thus damaging easily mid- and high-tier enemies. It also has better range.

So bow goes full Legolas on low-tier fodder, but anything tougher than that and you are fucked.

>>5204030You know that slings, as in weapon slings, were used historically against heavy-armored infantry, because when you got hit by an egg-sized ball of iron or lead, your helmet and skull get a nice dent in them? And things go even weirder when rather than ball-shaped, the projectile is in shape of two cones joined together at their bases.So it makes a perfect sense that slings are so powerful. Their main issue was always about lacking accuracy, not the weapon being shit.

Either way, crossbowmen are usually low tier units, so they are cheap and easy to level up. And don't suffer (that much) from being set ablaze, like ballista does.

Bow and arrow and crossbow have different purposes and designs behind them. The bow is a multi- range weapon, to do this the projectile aka arrow stabilizes itself due to the feathers and it being bigger but it is slower because a human can only get so much pull meaning draw weight into the system. A crossbow on the other hand has a simple bolt as projectile, it is more compact and through the use of the priciple of levers it can get an inhuman draw weight into its bow meaning hihger speed, and since the kinetic energy grows with the SQUARE of the velocity that means more impact- but it quickly loses effectiveness over longer distances. Over close distance it is superior.

>>5204038Over long distances, BOTH are shit, because the arrow wobbles in the air with or without fletching and at certain range its entire velocity comes from gravity pulling it down, hence with long range arrows are shit and crossbows won't reach that range anyway.In practical ranges, crossbows are superior in just about every possible regard, including being much cheaper to make IRL than bows.

>>5204026I haven't played that - does that one also represent how relatively quick and easy the training of crossbowmen was compared to archers, and the accuracy advantage that crossbows have due to not needing any effort to keep the string drawn back while taking aim?

>>5204037They were nerfed in 2/Shadow Magic, unfortunately, making Halflings almost useless except for leprechauns and if you wanted Sherrifs. I didn't know that about weapon slings, though. Not sure it really fits the lore of Halflings who learned slings for pranks and hunting that they have fully weaponized, war-ready slingers, but whatever. Makes sense.

Crossbows got fucked in SM, too, with Nomad horse archers able to achieve the highest tier of marksmanship, and the clearest mobility advantage. 8-stacking horse archers was the new 8-stack slingers.

>>5204050>It's another episode of longbow memesI'm not sure you understand the issue at hand. Or even care to notice it. The range of longbow, the effective range of longbow, is pretty much equal with contemporary range of crossbows.But sure, let's confuse tactics with weapon capacity. This longbow bullshit is one of the reason why it's so heavily pushed into games of all kind - stupid morons designing them thinks it's inherent to the weapon, rather than the effect of tactics (or lack of them) leading to the longbow meme being created in the first place.There are dozens, if not hundreds of reasons why bows are inferior to just about any possible ranged weapon, and each time someone defending them goes "but muh English longbow", ignoring all those issues due to being too fucking dense to know about them.

>>5204054It represents bows being shit weapons, inferior to crossbow, but also keeping both game balance and simple logic that it takes a while to wind-up a crossbow, even if in general it's going to hit harder.

>>5204057Slings were even worse than bows in 2, which is a damn shame. Never played SM, so can't tell about it.Still, in terms of shit weapons, nothing beats darts. 4 possible attacks per turn... and even level 0 fodder can shrug them off, so you are missing all 4 shots.

>>5204014FF4 doesn't really have a legit crossbow class of weapon. Crossbow is better than a normal bow but worse than all the special and magical bows you find later on.Anyway, Final Fantasy games in general are bad for weapons because progression is such an important element of the game. Any class of weapon you find in the last dungeon is going to be more powerful than whatever you buy in the first town weapon shop.

Technically not /vr/, but I always find it strange that they failed to properly convey the advantage of crossbows in Mount & Blade: Warband, but still managed to convey the superiority of guns in With Fire and Sword.

>>5204059Wasn't the English longbowmen just mainly welsh hunters who specialized in using longbows since childhood compared to random French recruits armed with a crossbow because they are easy to load